Memetics & Materialism
by Jason GodeskyMemetics has a strange relationship with primitivism. The primitivist critique of civilization draws much from Marvin Harris’s theory of cultural materialism—a post-Marxist theory which retains Marx’s idea of history driven by material factors rather than “great men and great deeds,� but eschewing Marx’s ultimately apocalyptic vision of an inevitable classless utopia. Primitivism critiques civilization on the grounds of cultural materialism as an inherently broken system. Much of it is based in systems thinking, arguing that civilization is systemically flawed because its scale is maladapted to humans, and its need to constantly grow is, in any finite universe, unsustainable.
At the same time, many primitivist thinkers—especially Daniel Quinn—abandon this same materialism when it comes time to propose a solution to this systemic problem. Instead, the solution is to invent a new “vision�—that is, to create a new, sustainable memeplex which will take hold because it gives people more of what they really want—that is, satisfaction with their lives, close personal relationships, and experiential, rather than material, wealth.
I can hardly argue with the fact that these are all things most people would much prefer, but this kind of proposition loses sight of the very thing “memetics� was supposed to address. The term was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1978 classic, The Selfish Gene, where Dawkins ended with a discussion of humanity’s ability to adapt culturally. Cultural adaptation works many times faster than biological adaptation; a man can sew a sweater in far less time than it will take natural selection to make his great-great-grandchildren hairier. This cultural adaptation has given humanity an adaptiveness and evolutionary fitness rivaled in the animal kingdom only by cockroaches. However, it is still an adaptation.
Dawkins proposed the term “meme� for the cultural analog of the “gene�—the basic unit of cultural evolution. Memetics, then, plays the same role in cultural evolution that mutation and genetic variation play in biological evolution. Memes create cultural variety; the forces of cultural materialism choose which of those varieties will succeed, and which will fail.
Take, for example, the emergence of Judaism as we know it today. Archaeological evidence—and even “reading between the lines� of the Tanakh—reveals that the original form of Judaism was, aside from its progressive social program, a very typical Bronze Age religion. It was a state religion that provided a foundation myth for the state, and relied on a “spirit of the place� form of monolatry. The God of Israel is presented not as the only god, but either as the best or highest god or, more commonly, our god—the only god we pay attention to.
Monolatry is typically quite tolerant of other religions, so it should come as no surprise that another local god, Baal, became competition for early Judaism. The prophets’ message was primarily a social one centered around caring for the poor and other radical, progressive goals. Such goals were rather unique to the Jewish religion, and obviously such priorities were not shared by Baal. In order to more effectively advance their social agenda, the prophets introduced a new memetic variation: monotheism. The prophets no longer referred to the God of Israel as the best or highest god, but as the only God.
The prophets were most active in the southern kingdom of Judea, consisting of the tribes of Judah and Levi. To the north was Israel, where the other ten tribes lived. That kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians. The fate of the “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel� was, in fact, very straightforward. The typical Assyrian imperial strategy was to conquer a region and export its people to all other parts of the empire, and then move their own people into the conquered region. This spread out the conquered populace, and thus reduced their ability to revolt. Without the influence of the prophets in the south, the northern kingdom was conquered as monolaters. When exported into a new land, they recognized they were no longer in the land of their former god, and instead began to worship the god of the new land they found themselves in. The “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel� were simply one more cultural group lost to Assyria’s very successful campaign of cultural assimilation.
Shortly thereafter, the southern kingdom of Judea was conquered, but the results were very different. The monolatrous portion of the conquered Jewish population were easily assimilated into the Babylonian population, just like the “Ten Lost Tribes� had been. However, the southern kingdom also had a monotheist population. For them, assimilation was not an option: one could not simply convert to the god of a new land, since all lands were ruled over by the same God. Rather than assimilate, these Jews saw themselves as “in exile,� allowing them not only to retain their identity as a distinct population, but to begin redefining what it meant to be “Jewish.� After the Babylonian Exile, the only Jews that remained were monotheists, most of the sacred texts had been set down (at least in some form), and the nature of Judaism had been turned into something much more reminiscent of what we know today.
Thus, memetics provides variation among cultures, just as mutations do in genetic evolution. Material pressures select which of those variations will succeed, and which will fail, just like natural selection. Thus, a new vision is not sufficient. Victor Hugo’s observation still stands: “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.” But the inverse is also true: nothing can make an idea flourish if it’s time has not come.
Daniel Quinn presents “vision change”–memetics–as a means to avoid the catastrophic collapse of civilization. However, as we’ve discussed, collapse is when large segments of a society abandon civilization; thus, any significant amount of “mind change” that Quinn’s followers might succeed in planting would only succeed in setting off a process of catabolic collapse.
We can divide the possible effects of Quinn’s “new minds” into two camps: those who change their behavior, and those who do not. Quinn’s insistence on “spreading the message” as an end in itself makes it effective as a meme, but ineffective as a means of changing behavior. Rather than actually do anything about the problems Quinn discusses, Quinn’s writings can become a kind of sedative that can put the mildly discontented back to sleep, so that everything can go on as normal. Such “backup systems” emerge in any culture, to maintain conformity further into the tails of society’s normal distribution of behavioral patterns.
Among those who actually change their behavior, we can see that anything which would effectively drive towards becoming more like a “Leaver” would necessarily involve, at the very least, ceasing any further investments in increased complexity. This kind of behavior is, in almost any time or place, as self-eliminating as the celibate sects in the United States in the 1800s. By refusing to increase their complexity at the same pace as the rest of the society around them, they volunteer to become less competitive. They may succeed in becoming an anomoly, like the Amish, but more likely will simply be outcompeted and driven into extinction once their resources are required in the ever-escalating, positive-feedback loop that is civilization.
So, under the current material reality, “vision change” is either (a) a means of supporting the system one is ostensibly “walking away” from, or (b) a self-eliminating strategy.
This is no cause for despair, though. Obviously, we are not damned to a dehumanizing and unsustainable way of life forever; by definition, nothing unsustainable can go on forever. Instead, the question is merely, what material context makes “vision change” viable? That context is collapse.
Consider the “Oxygen Holocaust” that gave rise to our own forebears, microbial organisms that actually consumed oxygen. Before that, all life was anaerobic. They exhaled oxygen as a waste, until they altered the balance of the atmosphere and began dying off from all of the oxygen. A mutation appeared, that actually needed oxygen, and the oxygen-carbon cycle began. Oxygen-breathing microbes had no distinct advantage until the “Oxygen Holocaust” began.
Likewise, “vision change” is self-eliminating–unless civilization is already collapsing. In a catabolic collapse, the tables are turned. Those who are able to create a sustainable alternative and exist apart from civilization have the best chance of survival; those dependent on the civilization in the midst of its death throes are doomed to die along with it.
This is an important caveat to understand, because it makes the Quinnian dream of escaping collapse through “vision change” a contradiction in terms. “Vision change” remains the means of saving the human race, but not by averting collapse. Instead, it becomes our memetic project to create a viable alternative that will succeed civilization and survive its collapse. Without a collapse, that alternative will simply be killed off; in the context of collapse, that alternative is the most likely to survive, and thrive.
But, as Tainter wrote, the emergence of such movements is the surest sign that collapse has passed the point of no return, as groups within civilization begin to consider how much better their lives might be at a lower level of complexity.
excellent post… again, very informative.
it might be worth noting in your example of the Jews in exile in Babylon, that they took advantage of a collapse. The dynastic collapse in Babylon is what allowed them to return back to Judea. They brought with them cultural memes (the prototype of Hebrew script, astronomical/astrological knowledge, etc.) borrowed from their captors while retaining there own monotheistic cultural identity. They took advantage of the more complex level of social/technological development in Babylon; learned some things and left.
perhaps this could be instructive?
Comment by patrick — 30 December 2005 @ 12:08 AM
It should be reminded that the “celibacy” cults of the 1800s were not created in order to have a community that would last. Rather, those cults were created because those members wished to live their lives the way they wanted to, and to die knowing they had lived happy lives. Their objective, in essence, was to eventually die out, but to do it happily.
Comment by Anonymous — 30 December 2005 @ 12:36 AM
One of your best posts so far. Happy new year, sorry it didn’t work out for you to come.
Comment by Devin — 1 January 2006 @ 6:52 PM
I disagree that people changing their ways would not catalyze a collapse. There would just be more left for the ones not participating in this change. Collapse happens when there is too many people and not enough resources to keep the system of distribution going or to have to distribute. I agree that memetics does nothing to change much.
Comment by planetwarming — 1 January 2006 @ 11:37 PM
Thanks, everyone!
Anonymous wrote:
Most people don’t set out to make a community that would last–sustainability is only a recent goal. Most of us set out to create a community where we can live the way we want to, just like those celbiacy cults. But as a meme, it’s obviously self-eliminating–just like a meme of “voluntary simplicity” is self-eliminating in an era of escalating investments in complexity. This is why society at large has always considered primitivists a bizarre fringe–Luddites, etc.–that’s eccentric but relatively harmless, because ultimately, it eliminates itself.
planetwarming wrote:
Well, you’re describing what would be, for Quinn, the “failure” scenario, wherein the numbers of people who change their behavior is too small to have any impact. Collapse doesn’t happen when thare are too many people and not enough resources, necessarily, because more resources can be harvested by increasing complexity. Moreover, too many people and not enough resources is so endemic to complex societies that such scarcity is the cornerstone of our entire understanding of economics. Rather, collapse occurs when the next required push in complexity costs so much that it’s no longer worth it–that is, when too many people consider their lives might be better with less complexity.
That will occur regardless of “vison,” just by taking a look at your bottom line. Then, the next increase in complexity to keep that balance of too many people and not enough resources viable through sheer, headlong motion won’t work. When that happens, that “failure” ensures the survival of the human race, by creating a memetic variety that is adapted to the new context of collapse.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 January 2006 @ 11:08 AM
I have a problem with this increaing complexity stuff or everything collapses. I just can’t see that. I see more wealth is accumulated and concentrated. The inevitability of large entities controlling everything and expanding seems more like about the inevitability of great power and how greedily callous people having that power and how resistant they are to less wasteful and more egalitarian communities. Peak oil isn’t about a need to increase complexity. We don’t enter into new complexities like for example the Information Age because if we didn’t civilization would collapse. It is because people could make money from it. IMHO
Comment by planetwarming — 3 January 2006 @ 6:12 PM
You’re confusing cause and effect. No, intensifying complexity is not caused by fear of collapse. Nobody invents some new technology, or some new bureaucracy, for fear of collapse. They do it because it’s a worthwhile investment. Yes, there’s a cost that needs to be put in, but there’s also a return. If the return outweighs the cost, you do it. If it doesn’t, you don’t.
Now, that leads to collapse, because you reach a point where you can’t afford any more complexity–and that means there’s no way to solve your problems anymore, except by reducing complexity.
Yes, I’m consciously shying away from terms like “greed.” This isn’t a problem of people being “bad,” that can simply be solved by expecting people to be better than they’ve ever been before. Do you know any CEO’s or politicians? Have you ever sat down and talked to one? In terms of moral fiber, they run the gamut, but I’d venture that their average is probably a little higher than the total population. I’ve met few politicians who didn’t honestly and earnestly believe in what they were doing, and most of the CEO’s I’ve met have been fair-minded, decent people who wanted to do right by their employees and make the world better than they found it.
But it doesn’t matter how honest, earnest, fair-minded or decent you are, if you’re just another cog in a broken machine. The problem isn’t our flawed human nature. The problem is that this system was set up with the opposite of human nature in mind. We’re not bad people in a good system; we’re good people in a bad system.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2006 @ 1:15 AM
In your opening paragraph you discuss Harris’s Cultural Materialism, From what you state there, I infer that you have misunderstood his materialist position.
I posted some comments under your psychobabbling Shamanism article. More reason to assume that you don’t have the foggiest notion of scientific materialism. No wonder that you have wasted your precious bodily fluids hawking new age primitivism.
You write so well and appear to be a decent fellow with my kind of politics. Give Harris another thorough look. Also, Stanislav Andreski’s witty debunking of most social science in Social science as Sorcery (written in 1972 no less)still gives me a thrill.
Comment by gerald spezio — 21 February 2006 @ 4:39 PM
Which part? That materialism sees history as driven by material factors, or that it rejects the idea that history driven by material factors must necessarily have one specific endpoint in mind? Or do you simply object to the reminder that cultural materialism is a post-Marxist framework?
Perhaps, but we’re discussing “cultural materialism” here.
There’s a big difference between the kind of primitivism you find here and anything relating to New Age.
What, the first four years were insufficient? Just how much Harris have you read? I have six volumes that I own, not counting the ones I checked out of the library over the years. I know whereof I speak; I doubt you do.
Predictably.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 February 2006 @ 4:59 PM
No wonder that you have wasted your precious bodily fluids hawking new age primitivism… (various squawking noises)
Hawking new age primitivism? Anthropik isn’t even close. Man, you need to check out some REAL fringe websites. This site is fucking tame in comparison to most. The Tribe of Anthropik’s stuff is conservative and reliant on dominant science - that’s why so many people read it and use it as evidence: it can be used to prove collapse to those who are slaves to the dominant scientific mentality. (And it’s about god-damn time somebody finally got around to doing it.)
If you hate the fringe so much, you should find out what it really looks like. Check out some of Ran Prieur’s stuff, and follow his links. Don’t call Anthropik the fringe; for its field, it’s the widely accepted mainstream.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 21 February 2006 @ 5:40 PM
Thanks, Chuck … I don’t know if I’ve been insulted or complimented, so I’ll assume the latter.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 February 2006 @ 5:42 PM
In the 70s E. F. Schumacher’s Small is beautiful was widely read and discussed. “Voluntary simplicity” became a genuine buzzword. Schumacher in his later book, Guide for the Perplexed, went on about breatharianism and great “mind changes” to come. Muddleheaded Willis Harman too became very popular predicting great “global mind changes.” Ditto for Capra’s foolish new age nonsense in the Tao of Physics.
Look around and what do you see? The escalation of “involuntary simplicity.” Do the revelations of John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man have anything to do with a hungry Bolivian subsistence farmer? A Vassar grad in art history and a Christian Scientist tells me that “people are poor because they want to be poor.”
Comment by gerald spezio — 22 February 2006 @ 2:02 PM
Thanks for the review, but I’m missing your point…?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 February 2006 @ 2:15 PM
“But, as Tainter wrote, the emergence of such movements is the surest sign that collapse has passed the point of no return, as groups within civilization begin to consider how much better their lives might be at a lower level of complexity.”
Well, this sums up my recent career shift beautifully. It’s back to my roots. Hope you don’t mind if I quote you. With attribution of course, as always.
Comment by Peter — 22 March 2006 @ 11:16 PM
Chuck, you’re right. Anthropik sold out. I knew it was game over when Jason bragged about having cut a deal with Abercrombie & Fitch to launch a new line of Paleolithic t-shirts and fashion accessories.
Comment by Peter — 22 March 2006 @ 11:52 PM
Devin says: “One of your best posts so far”
Since I have not read many other posts, I cannot know whether that statement is true or not. But I would wholeheartedly agreee with what
Patrick says: “excellent post … again, very informative”
Very now and then in the last two or three years, the term “meme” has been popping into my perception. It sounded like it must mean something, but again, and in particular as used in “memetics”, it had the ring of some esoteric teaching.
Having read the above entry of Mr Godesky with the description of how the “meme” of monotheism has originated, I might even feel confident using the word “meme” myself.
Actually, the notion behind the word “meme” has been familiar to me long before I read the term.
Oswald Spengler in his “Untergang des Abendlandes” (”Decline of the West”) is postulating a “Kulturseele” (civilisational soul) as the driving force behind the course of each civilisation. Translating that metaphor into a more modern one, you might speak of “operating system” or “cultural gene”. Or, as I have now learnt, of “meme”.
Besides opening my eye for the content (and usefulness) of the word “meme”, I have also gelaned stimulating information about the origin of monotheism, or about the “Oxygen Holocaust”.
Also, the comments present some interesting ideas.
As for Mr. Godesky’s understanding of “collapse” (#8) however, I ‘respectfully dissent’. IMHO, ‘a collapse is not a collapse’.
Rather, there are two distinctly different ways to cause a collapse.
Think of the collapse of an individual person: it can be brought about by intrinsic factors (disease), or by someone hitting you with a hammer on the head (or putting you in jail and depriving you of food).
Equally, the breakdown of a society, or of a civilisation, can be a “Tainterian” collapse due to excessive complexity. These days, however, mankind more likely seems to be heading towards a situation where (contrary to Mr. Godeskys opinion) even an increase in complexity will not enable us to “harvest more resources”. But of course, there is always a chance of the complexity collapse (or a certain degree of it) will precede the depletion collapse.
It is also conceivable that we will be seeing an interplay of both. I am convinced that there is a relation between complexity and sheer mass of people. The relation is not 1 : 1. If take the Wikipedia statistics as an indicator, it shows some 70.000 entries for some 260 Mio. speakers of Russian (some 270 articles per Mio. speakers), but some 380.000 articles for 124 Mio. German speakers (around 3.100 articles per 1 Mio. speakers).
In English, the statistic shows around 1 Mio. articles for 1 billion speakers, or around 1.100 articles per 1 Mio. speakers.
So obviously, while there seems to be more information per head in the German Wikipedia (some of which may simply be a translation from the English edition), the total information storage in English is much larger.
The obvious conclusion is that with economic conditions and cultural advancement being roughly equal, a larger population can afford a much higher complexity (and I guess knowledge itself is a form of complexity?) than a smaller population.
Therefore, if the depletion collapse curbs the size of the world population, we are also going to loose much of the knowledge necessary to keep up the complexity which in turn would be necessary to postpone depletion (for a little while, because eventually you cannot stop it).
Anyway: life is going to change drastically some time in the next 50 years.
If I am lucky, I will not be around any more when it happens. While it would be a situation interesting to watch, I’m afraid it won’t be quite as nice to live through.
Comment by Canabbaia — 16 May 2006 @ 3:12 PM
One of Tainter’s better points is that it’s theoretically impossible to explain the collapse of a complex society in terms of lack of resources–even if it’s a sudden lack of resources–because handling such lack is the very raison d’etre for complexity. We turn to complex societies specifically to alleviate such lack.
But, with diminishing marginal returns, a complex society’s ability to answer such lack may become diminished, so that the very same depletions that complex society formed to address, and addressed successfully in the past, become too much to handle.
Think of it like prying doors open with a crowbar. You can’t explain why the crowbar broke by saying, “Well, he tried to open that door with it!” You explain it in terms of how it got weaker over time, and as it got weaker and all those doors stayed the same as they always had been, the same doors the crowbar opened with ease later in its life by the end were too much for it to handle.
And you’re right, there is a very strong relationship between complexity and population, and it’s not 1:1. Complexity and population are both functions of energy.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 May 2006 @ 3:23 PM
Gee, are you fast!
(Looks like I was fast too, or rather “too fast”, judging from the many spelling errors I now detect in my post - apart from language errors, which I am unaware of).
Maybe I don’t quite grasp the meaning of your first paragraph, but most certainly there is a difference as to whether the Roman state/society collapsed from lack of, say, iron (arguendo; in reality of course it did not), or because the state had gotten too big for the central administration/emperors to handle its defence against the barbarians any longer?
Side remark: See you have been looking at my blog and must have gotten the impression that it’s all in German. However, there are a few exceptions, like “The (B)rat in the box at the ultimate lever” of 25/05/2005 (http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=12398231&postID=111445581805951097).
My Website proper is http://www.beltwild.de, but that, too, is nearly all in German language.
Comment by Canabbaia — 16 May 2006 @ 4:02 PM
The only difference is, “What is the problem you eventually reach, that you can’t solve?” Problems come and go, of course, and some are worse than others. If we think of them in very loose terms, you might think of them as little bars on that diminishing returns graph. If the bar is below the curve, then we can handle it; if not, we can’t. A bar can shoot up even when you’re still seeing increasing marginal returns; but, it’s more likely that you’re going to hit that when your ability is low and getting lower, than if you’re on the upswing.
This is where I think John Michael Greer’s theory of catabolic collapse becomes really important–because while I think Tainter’s model is theoretically quite sound, when you look at any given collapse, you need to disentangle it. Rome’s an almost perfect example of a society crushed under the weight of its own complexity, but some of the more sudden collapses like those in the New World provide examples of what happens when a society hits a problem its diminished efficacy can’t handle.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 May 2006 @ 4:29 PM